One Year Later: A Battle for Truth and Democracy

A year after the Trump supporting insurrectionists stormed the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to overturna legitimate election, the battle for the truth and continued American democracy remains the most importnant political contest facing the nation.   On one side stand Donald Trump and the vast majority of the Republican Party who now represent a world of "alternate facts", outright lies and a push for autocracy.  Among the lies is a column in the Washington Post that insanely blames the media for the insurrectionist attack on January 6, 2021, and accuses the mainstream media of "purposely trying to mislead people by saying things they know are false or gross exaggerations."  If anything, of course, the truth is the exact opposite and the media's false equivalency mindset and fear of calling Trump and his acolytes liars helped (i) get Trum elected and (ii) helped fuel "the big lie." On the other side of the battle stand Joe Biden, the majority of Democrats and a handful of Reublicans, including Liz Cheney and her father who I used to refer to as "Emperor Palpatine" - what a difference fifteen years has made in the opitical world.  In speeches yesterday, Democrats belatedly threw down the guantlet and framed the ongoing battle for what is: a battle for truth and continued democracy.  Another column in the Washington Post looks at the situation.  Here are highlights:

It has always been clear, but not always clearly stated, that the person responsible for the deadly insurrection at the U.S. Capitol last Jan. 6 was Donald Trump. In his speech Thursday, President Biden called Trump out — without once mentioning his name.

Speaking in the Capitol’s historic Statuary Hall on the first anniversary of the coup attempt, Biden minced no words about the man he beat in the 2020 election. “He can’t accept he lost,” Biden said. “He’s not just the former president, he’s the defeated former president. … You can’t love your country only when you win.”

There were no new revelations from Biden and Vice President Harris about the shockingly violent events we all witnessed a year ago. But I did think I was hearing a new tone from an administration that, until now, has tried to look ahead rather than behind and has avoided re-litigating the Trump years. “I did not seek this fight,” Biden said. “But I will not shrink from it either.”

By “this fight,” Biden meant the effort to repair and reinforce our democracy after the brutalization it suffered under Trump. But I had to wonder whether the speech might someday be remembered as the opening salvo of a 2024 Biden-Trump rematch.

The quick response Thursday from the defeated former president suggested that Biden’s words had gotten under his skin. In a statement, Trump falsely claimed that Biden “used my name today to try to further divide America.” Since Trump’s lies often map his fears and obsessions, it sounds to me as if it might unnerve him that Biden didn’t say his name at all.

Harris, in her own remarks, set the context for Biden’s speech by putting the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection on par with two other dates that “echo throughout history” — the Dec. 7, 1941, Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor; and the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The Capitol riot showed “what our nation would look like if the forces that seek to dismantle our democracy are successful,” she said.

“We are in a battle for the soul of America,” Biden said. This time, though, the enemy is not foreign but domestic. And that enemy of our democracy has a name, even if Biden declined to let it cross his lips.

Last year, in the hours after the insurrection, even some of Trump’s closest political allies saw those wounds clearly and were outraged. Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) said that he was finished with Trump once and for all. Then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) put the blame squarely on Trump. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), who had pleaded with Trump to tell the rioters to go home, said Trump was responsible for the insurrection.

What a difference a year makes. On Thursday, Graham attacked Biden — not Trump — for what he called “brazen politicization” of the anniversary. McConnell, too, accused “some Washington Democrats” of trying to “exploit this anniversary.” And McCarthy, like almost all of his fellow Republicans in Congress, was conspicuously absent from the day’s events commemorating the worst assault on the Capitol since British troops burned the building in 1814.

Biden asked, “Are we going to be a nation that lives not by the light of the truth but in the shadow of lies?” The fact that this question had to be raised at all shows what the president is up against: To survive in today’s Republican Party, officials and candidates cannot afford to anger Trump; and to avoid Trump’s wrath, they cannot forcefully reject his lies about the election purportedly having been “stolen.”

The president spent much of his speech refuting those lies with facts and logic. I hope he returns to the subject regularly in the weeks and months to come. Largely ignoring Trump hasn’t weakened his hold on the GOP. The defeated former president must be treated like any other bully: You have to stand up to him.

Trump and his allies will continue to claim that telling the truth about Jan. 6 is some kind of partisan political ploy. It is not. More than 140 police officers were injured in the melee. Several officers later died.  . . . none of this would have happened if Trump had not illegally tried to cling to power by overturning the will of 81 million voters.

Biden has to lead the fight for truth and democracy. Losing is not an option.

I continue to be fearful for the future.  I am also beyond angry that Trump and his self-prostituting acolytes describe myself and others as not "real Americans" - ironically, I have been working on my family genealgy and discovered that on my mother's side one ancestor was born in Massachusetts in 1638 and others were born in South Carolina in the early 1700's. I'd argue that it is Trump and other latecomers who support him who are the true false Americans.